The term “Web Services” has gained visibility in recent years, as various big industry players announce their Web Services strategies. Web Services are standards-based software components providing a variety of internet-based services. Web services can vary in function from simple operations, for example, the retrieval of a stock quote over the Internet, to complex business operations, which access and combine information from multiple sources. Once a Web Service is deployed, other applications and Web Services can discover and exchange data with the service in a standardized manner.
FIG. 1 illustrates high-level architecture of Web Services. Service providers 100 publish information about their Web Services into a service registry 102, allowing service consumers 101 to search for particular Web Services in the registry, and bind applications with those Web Services. The service registry 102 is a Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (“UDDI”) standard-complying registry. The UDDI registry includes white pages, yellow pages and green pages. White pages contain contact information of Web Services providers, such as addresses and phone numbers, yellow pages contain industry classifications and green pages contain description of services provided by service providers.
However, the UDDI registry does not include information about specific items (e.g., offered products and/or services) provided by Web Service providers 100. If a Web Service consumer 101 is searching for a particular item, the consumer must first query the UDDI registry for Web Service providers that provide services in the field to which the particular item belongs. The consumer must then contact the Web Service providers individually to determine whether any of the identified providers offer specific items that the consumer is looking for.
In addition, existing item registries often do not include supplemental information related to the electronic communication capabilities of each item supplier. In this case, after finding appropriate item suppliers, the consumer must then contact the item suppliers individually to determine whether any of them offers specific Web services the consumer is capable of interacting with.
What is needed, therefore, is a solution that overcomes these and other shortcomings of the prior art.